Social Reading list for close friends: Bad or good idea?

1 points by fabiankutschera 6 years ago | 5 comments

Hi guys!

This is my first post on HN - I read and enjoy since years but was so far a passive reader.

Now I have a product idea and I am currently testing this with users and a prototype.

But I would also like to hear your feedback for my idea!

Idea in summary: A solution (App + Web-App + Extension) where people can save cool articles they want to read later. So far so normal.

The main difference to Pocket or other read-later apps should be that I can easily share articles with friends so that they don't forget to read these articles. I validated already that people have the clear problem that they forget to read articles their friends had sent them on Whatsapp/Messenger/email. Eventually, it's a mix of social network and reading list.

What do you think about this idea?

Thanks for the feedback!

* Landing page of project : zuster.me

fabiankutschera 6 years ago |

Hey Luckylion! Cheers for the thoughts! People I had asked claimend that they really wanted to read the article and I had also limited my research to long articles from sophisticated news like NYT. However, I can't say for sure that they really wanted to read the article or just said so. The summary idea you brought up is actually an interesting one: Getting an automatic summary (or some key sentences) so that I know at least roughly what the article is about. That's what you mean, right? There was a simliar idea recently on product hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/i-lazy-to-read. Worked medium well for me but the idea is quite cool

luckylion 6 years ago | |

Yeah, something along those lines. Not sure how well it'll work on a pure technological solution, but with a social app you may get people to summarize it.

billconan 6 years ago |

many years ago I wanted to do the same, a socialized browser. At the time I was a heavy user of google reader that had a social reading list like what you described. I imagined that the social reading experience can be integrated into a browser.

But I found out (on google reader) that my physical friends have drastically different interests from mine. They have no interests in my shares and one friend even complained that I spammed her. And actually, most of my friends don't read.

Eventually I didn’t work on this idea. I felt that it won’t be too much different from sharing on Twitter. I still have my UI mock-up for the project though.

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/87...

fabiankutschera 6 years ago | |

Interesting that you had a similar idea, thanks for sharing!

luckylion 6 years ago |

Are people actually forgetting to read the articles but totally want to, or do they not really care as much and generally get too much "omg you need to read this" links? Depending on who sent me a link, I'd tell them honestly that I don't care about their pet issue/celebrities/tomorrow's end of the world/superhero movies/whatever or I'd say "oh I totally forgot to read that piece about that thing now that you mention it".

If you'll offer an extra service for me that gives me a very short summary in case I get asked, two non-committal but smart sounding points and a good way to change the topic to something else ... that might be something!